Metaphysics and Ontology: Being, Substance and Causes in Aristotle
Metaphysics
Metaphysics: existence is not separately transcendent of the world. The world, the physics of sensible things, and nature are images or imitations of things. Entities such as ideas are not Platonic ideas. Plato's ideas are only apparent and phenomenal, and not real beings. On the contrary, things are real and really are what they are. The same things have in themselves, and not outside, the real principles immanent to their being.
The principles are matter and form. According to hylomorphism (hyle = matter, morphe = form), the theory establishes that every substance is a composite of matter and form, the real and immanent constitutive co-principles of bodies, whether natural or artificial. In this theory, the ideas of the celestial and terrestrial worlds, the forms of Plato, are no longer the models or patterns of sensible things, but have become the intrinsic and informing principles of these things.
Form and Matter
The form determines the elements of a thing and makes matter be something special. The matter is the general substrate and corporeal substance. It may be prime or second. Prime matter is common to all bodies, eternal, and inseparable from form, and is not corruptible. Second matter is determined by form. The direct object of matter is not form, and natural beings are composed of form and matter.
The Four Elements
There are four elements: earth, water, air, and fire.
The Celestial and Sublunar Realms
The supralunar zone consists of concentric spheres, while the sublunar zone is mixed. The supralunar zone is simple, and the sublunar zone is where the decomposition and composition of bodies occur, producing motion.
- a) Substantial: passing into a thing specifically distinct from another.
- b) Accidental: the form is modified while the substance remains.
- b1) Qualitative: loss or gain of some quality.
- b2) Quantitative: increase or decrease.
- b3) Local: change of place, rotation, or translation.
Causes
Every causal agent operates for a determined end. Four causes intervene in the production of a being, which are either extrinsic or intrinsic:
- (a) Extrinsic causes
- a1) Efficient cause: the producer.
- a2) Final cause: that for the sake of which something is done.
- (b) Intrinsic causes
- b1) Material cause: that out of which something is made.
- b2) Formal cause: what is acquired or produced.
Gradation of Souls
There is a gradation corresponding to the different grades of life, or souls:
- a) Vegetative
- b) Sensitive
- c) Rational
Ontology
Ontology: the term "being" has many meanings, founded on one. Ontology is the science that studies being as being. Since being is not univocal, it cannot be a genus, and its meanings are analogous rather than equivocal. Being is not the same for different things, so there cannot be a single science of being that validates all of them. Because of this, for Aristotle, the terms "being" and "concept" are analogous, and their extension and content are related to each other. Thus, it can be affirmed that being is said in many ways.
Aristotle's Four Modes of Being
Aristotle reduces being to four groups or modes:
- Being per se and per accidens.
- The Categories: the different modes of being of the categories constitute the content of the different predicates that can be attributed to a subject. In several works, Aristotle lists these categories in two groups:
- a) the substance, or being in itself;
- b) the accidents, which can only exist in a substance:
- b1) quality
- b2) quantity
- b3) relation
- b4) action
- b5) habit
- b6) passion
- b7) time
- b8) place
- b9) position
- Being as true and as false: truth always lies in the understanding when it affirms or denies something when it judges.
- Being as potency and being as act.